LAGUNA NIGUEL : City Staff Won’t Back Smith’s Center Plan

With community opposition to the proposed Smith’s Food and Drug Center growing, the city manager said Monday that his staff will not support the project tonight when it comes before the Planning Commission.

Calling the center “a big box” that clashes with the goals laid out in the city’s General Plan, City Manager Tim Casey said that approving construction of the 77,754-square-foot center would “really strain good planning practices.”

Developer Birtcher Niguel’s proposal to build the 24-hour discount grocery and drugstore has been greeted by swelling public criticism in the form of a petition drive and both phone and door-to-door campaigns. Casey attributed the outcry to the high expectations for the premium parcel at the corner of La Paz and Aliso Creek roads.

“We spent 60 public meetings and two years on the General Plan, and this project is not part of the outcome,” said Casey, citing the General Plan’s specific mention of a mixed-use development for the high-visibility corner. “This isn’t the vision. (That site) just lends itself to something different, something more special.”

Closer to that vision, Casey said, was an earlier Birtcher plan to build an “urban village” on the 7.27-acre site, replete with an 1,800-seat theater, a family fitness center, restaurants, 10,000 square feet of retail stores and 300,000 square feet of commercial offices.

That plan, approved unanimously Jan. 19 by the City Council, fell through when Edwards Cinema backed out of the project, city officials said.

Officials for both Smith’s Food and Drug Center and Birtcher have stressed in earlier hearings on the plan that they are willing to work with the city staff to fine-tune the project and bring the designs closer to the community’s standards. Both companies are expected to make presentations on the plan before the Planning Commission tonight.

Richard Motske, for 13 years the owner of the Druggist pharmacy across the street from the proposed center, said he has helped organize community resistance to the latest plan because another grocery store would only detract from the area.

“It would just be a duplication of services to put that there,” said Motske, who has collected more than 900 signatures of residents opposed to the Smith’s center. “There are seven supermarkets within three miles, including another Smith’s. It’s going to affect every small shopping center around here, not just us, and it won’t bring in anything new.”

The Planning Commission meets at 7 p.m. in the City Council Chambers at City Hall, 27801 La Paz Road.